Free Murder on a Hot Tin Roof by Amanda Matetsky

about the coincidence. “And he lived on Christopher Street, too.”

    “So what? Not every man who works and lives here is gay. Just some of them are. And you can take it from me, babe, Gray didn’t belong to the club.”

    “Then why was your affair with him so brief?” I asked. “Did you dump him for somebody else?” (This wasn’t an impertinent question, I swear. It was fair and perfectly reasonable. Abby was so beautiful and voluptuous and smart, no man ever willingly broke up with her. Whenever there was dumping to be done, she had to be the one to do it.)

    “Nobody dumped anybody,” Abby insisted. “Gray simply decided to commit himself to just one of his flames and stop shtupping all the others. I was one of the others.”

    “How many of those were there?”

    “How the hell should I know? I didn’t ask him for an itemized list!” She was getting touchy again. She ripped her roll apart, swiped a piece of it through the leftover gravy in her otherwise empty plate, then poked the gloppy morsel in her mouth.

    I took one taste of my canned fruit and Jell-O mold, then shoved the warm, half-melted mess aside. “Do you know who Gray’s chosen mate was?” I asked. “The one he finally committed himself to, I mean?”

    “No,” she said, eyeing the gooey remains of my gelatin salad. “I never met her, and he never told me her real name. I only saw Gray when he was posing for me, you dig, and he didn’t talk about his girlfriend much at all. And the few times that he did bring her up, he just called her Cupcake.” Abby stretched her arm out over the table and picked up the plate of oozing Jell-O. “Are you finished with this?” she asked.

    “Unconditionally,” I said. “Have a party.”

    While Abby was polishing off whatever edibles were left on the table, I sat back in my chair and smoked a cigarette, silently watching the ghost-white fumes vanish in the gyrating air. I probably looked quite serene and relaxed, but my mind was spinning faster than the ceiling fans above. I smelled something fishy, and I knew it wasn’t just the food.

Chapter 7

    “WANT TO GO TO THE MOVIES?” ABBY asked as we stood up from the table and headed for the cafeteria exit. “ Dial M for Murder is still playing at the Waverly. I wouldn’t mind seeing that again.”

    I wouldn’t have objected to seeing the clever Hitchcock mystery again, either, but at the moment my thoughts were focused on a different murder. “Two killings in one day?” I said. “That’s two too many for me.”

    “I guess you’re right,” Abby said, growing sadder by the second. “I just thought it would take our minds off—”

    “Hold on a minute,” I broke in, coming to an abrupt standstill three feet inside door. “I want to talk to the busboys before we leave.” I looked around and saw them standing together near the entrance to the kitchen. “Wait here for me, okay?”

    “No! Why should I? What do you want to talk to them about, anyway? If they have anything interesting to say, I want to hear it, too. I’m coming with you!”

    “Please don’t, Abby. Please stay here. I just want to ask them a couple of questions about Gray, and I think I’ll get more answers if I talk to them alone. The two of us together might be too overwhelming.”

    To my great surprise, she reconsidered and agreed. “Oh, all right!” she huffed, flipping her ponytail off her shoulder and letting it swing down her back. “But you’d better make it quick, Dick. I haven’t got all day.” She made a big production out of looking at her watch and tapping her foot. (In case you haven’t noticed, Abby has the patience of a gnat.)

    I hurried over to where the two busboys were standing and gave them both a cursory once-over. One was young, tall, thin, and had shoe-polish black hair. The other was young, tall, thin, and had peroxide blond hair. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder in their identical white uniforms, they looked like a matched pair of